How can designers tell the real from the fake? Hosting some 350-plus dealers from around the world, the Marburger Farm Antique Show in Round Top, Texas, is back for its second decade with a focus on just that: authenticity in design.
“When people come from all over the world, they expect authentic antiques and vintage,” says the show’s authenticity advisor, Donald Cowan, who helps its antiques dealers to accurately identify and describe their wares. “They are not looking for false-vintage reproductions or items in current mass-production.” Cowan also works to prevent any new reproductions from being exhibited.
Exhibitors hail from stateside and beyond and, the show says, share a commitment to selling verified authentic pieces. “We compete on authenticity and quality. We are not a catalogue full of things that look sort of old. We carry things that are truly old and that have a quality that is impossible to reproduce,” says Richard Machtolff of Machtolff’s Mercantile, which this season is exhibiting farm-made antique linen from Belgium and France, furniture, American folk art, and cast-iron and concrete urns. “When people buy a weathervane from us, they want to have faith in the people they are dealing with and to know that they are getting the real thing.”
Shares Atlanta, Georgia, exhibitor Greg Mountcastle, who arrives with modernism pieces from the 1930s to the 1980s spanning furniture, paintings and mirrors, as well as a collection tables and chairs by French designer Jacques Adnet: “I only buy original pieces, because the reproductions are not good investments or good quality…. Marburger works hard to maintain integrity. I have done shows all over the world. This is the best show there is.”
In addition to vintage, new artwork will also be highlighted at the show, with approximately 30 dealers exhibiting original art, accessories and art furniture.
The Marburger Farm Antique Show opens its doors September 26, with early buying beginning at 10 a.m. It runs through September 30. Find the full exhibitor list ONLINE.
